I have been testing out Win7 Ultimate x64 and am experiencing some disturbing behavior - the winSxs folder seems to be growing to an uncomfortable size. My initial partition size was 20Gb but I was getting warnings about a lack of disk space within a couple of days. I reinstalled with a 40Gb partition size and after a week or so my total C: partition is already up to 24Gb (though it images down to 7Gb).

Install is a pretty basic install, handfull of utilities and Office 2k7. All data/user files have been moved of the C drive so user data is not an issue.

From searching Google this seems to have been an issue with Vista as well but I haven't been able to find any real resolution other than "deal with it, storage space is cheap!" I know there are a bunch of symbolic links and the folder size of 10Gb doesn't really mean 10Gb, but when programs refuse to install due to a reported lack of space the "imaginary" file size becomes pretty real.

My concern is with planning for laptop installs w/ space constrained SSDs as well as virtual test machines - is 40Gb going to be enough?

I have been testing out Win7 Ultimate x64 and am experiencing some disturbing behavior - the winSxs folder seems to be growing to an uncomfortable size. My initial partition size was 20Gb but I was getting warnings about a lack of disk space within a couple of days. I reinstalled with a 40Gb partition size and after a week or so my total C: partition is already up to 24Gb (though it images down to 7Gb).

Install is a pretty basic install, handfull of utilities and Office 2k7. All data/user files have been moved of the C drive so user data is not an issue.

From searching Google this seems to have been an issue with Vista as well but I haven't been able to find any real resolution other than "deal with it, storage space is cheap!" I know there are a bunch of symbolic links and the folder size of 10Gb doesn't really mean 10Gb, but when programs refuse to install due to a reported lack of space the "imaginary" file size becomes pretty real.

My concern is with planning for laptop installs w/ space constrained SSDs as well as virtual test machines - is 40Gb going to be enough?

Anyone have any insights in this behavior?

G^2

G
Hi and welcome

Unfortunately it is a fact of life in both vista and win 7. The winsxs folder can be moved with a lot of work but it still is going to grow. If you do alot of app installs, it can get huge. I have reports fro users that theirs have become 25gigs by itself.

The folder is necessary to provide all the different versions of 'DLL' for each individual app.

Unfortunately it is a fact of life in both vista and win 7. The winsxs folder can be moved with a lot of work but it still is going to grow. If you do alot of app installs, it can get huge. I have reports fro users that theirs have become 25gigs by itself.
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